Chapter 4 - My Husband Finally Asked the Right Question
Khloe recovered quickly.
That was one of her gifts.
Most people needed time to manufacture a lie.
Khloe only needed an audience.
Through a listening device Detective Ruiz had installed outside her apartment under warrant, we heard her answer Preston.
“Tara gave it to me.”
Preston stared at her.
“When?”
“At the venue.”
“Before the fire?”
“Yes.”
“She gave you the bracelet she planned to wear at our wedding?”
Khloe’s face changed.
Only slightly.
“She changed her mind.”
Preston stepped inside.
“I saw Tara searching for that bracelet before the ceremony.”
“She probably forgot.”
“She accused the makeup artist of moving it.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The truth.”
Khloe folded her arms.
“You just lost your wife. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“My wife died behind a door I left her behind.”
“You saved me.”
“Stop saying that.”
Khloe flinched.
Preston had probably never raised his voice to her.
I had.
Not often.
Once after my father’s memorial, when Preston disappeared because Khloe called about another “emergency,” I told her that if she needed my fiancé more than I did at my father’s funeral, she should marry him herself.
She cried.
Preston told me I had been cruel.
Three weeks later, I apologized.
That memory tasted bitter now.
On the feed, Preston reached for the bracelet.
Khloe stepped back.
“Don’t.”
“Why?”
“It’s mine.”
“No.”
His voice was quiet.
“It belonged to Tara’s mother. Martin gave it to Tara. It is not yours.”
“I said she gave it to me.”
“And I’m telling you I don’t believe you.”
For the first time, Khloe looked afraid.
Not devastated.
Not heartbroken.
Afraid.
She unclasped the bracelet.
Then smiled.
“Fine.”
She handed it over.
Preston looked at the pearls.
One was missing.
The pearl Wyatt had found.
He noticed immediately.
“What happened here?”
“It broke.”
“When?”
Khloe didn’t answer.
Preston looked up.
“When did it break?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Interesting.”
“Why?”
“Because I remember Tara wearing this at dinner with her father.”
My throat tightened.
Preston continued.
“Martin told her there were thirty-two pearls. One for every year he and Tara’s mother knew each other.”
I hadn’t remembered that.
Preston had.
The realization hurt in a different way.
He had noticed things.
He had loved parts of me carefully.
He had just failed to love me when loving me cost him something.
Khloe’s voice sharpened.
“You came here to interrogate me?”
“I came here because Wyatt told me you were carrying gasoline before the fire.”
Silence.
Detective Ruiz cursed.
“He wasn’t supposed to say that.”
I understood why immediately.
Preston had just exposed a witness.
Khloe’s expression went blank.
“Wyatt is confused.”
“He’s a firefighter.”
“So?”
“He knows what a gasoline container looks like.”
“The groundskeeper gave it to me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t remember.”
Preston’s hand closed around the bracelet.
“Did you start the fire?”
Khloe slapped him.
The sound echoed through the microphone.
Preston didn’t move.
Her eyes filled instantly.
“You think I killed Tara?”
“I think I don’t know you.”
“I nearly died too.”
“No.”
Preston stepped closer.
“You were standing beside an exit.”
Khloe went pale.
“Who told you?”
That was the wrong question.
Preston knew it.
So did I.
He whispered, “You were standing?”
Khloe’s mouth opened.
Closed.
Then she started crying.
Real tears this time.
“I panicked.”
“You told Wyatt Tara was already outside.”
“I thought she was.”
“You heard her screaming.”
“I couldn’t tell where it came from.”
“You were twenty feet away.”
Smoke seemed to return to my lungs.
I heard myself pounding on that door.
Preston!
I’m here!
The door is blocked!
Preston’s voice broke.
“Why did you tell him she was out?”
“I was scared.”
“Why were you wearing her bracelet?”
No answer.
“Why did you ask the hospital seven times whether she woke up?”
Khloe froze.
Detective Ruiz smiled without humor.
“Now he’s useful.”
Khloe whispered, “How do you know that?”
“I didn’t.”
Preston stared at her.
“But now I do.”
He turned toward the door.
Khloe grabbed his arm.
“Preston, wait.”
He pulled away.
“I slept with you.”
There it was.
The words entered the room like another fire.
Even though I already knew.
Even though every piece had been lying in front of me.
Hearing him say it aloud made the betrayal solid.
Wyatt, standing near the window in my hospital room, looked away.
Preston continued.
“I lied to Tara for eleven months.”
Eleven.
I had guessed six.
Eleven months meant the affair began before my father died.
Before our engagement photos.
Before Preston helped carry my father’s casket.
Before he held me in bed while I cried and told me he would never let me lose anyone alone again.
My stomach turned.
“I told myself you were fragile,” Preston said. “I told myself I was helping you. Then I crossed a line and kept crossing it.”
Khloe’s tears vanished.
“You loved me.”
“I used you.”
“You said—”
“I lied to both of you.”
I couldn’t breathe for a moment.
There was something almost cruel about his honesty arriving three days after my supposed death.
Where had that courage been while I was alive?
Khloe whispered, “We can finally be together.”
Preston looked at her as though she had spoken another language.
“My wife is dead.”
“She never understood you.”
“And you think this is the moment to say that?”
“She was leaving you.”
His face changed.
“What?”
Khloe realized too late.
Preston stepped closer.
“What did you say?”
“She was unhappy.”
“How would you know?”
“She told me.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“You don’t know everything about her.”
“No.”
He held up the bracelet.
“But apparently you do.”
Khloe backed away.
“Give that back.”
“No.”
“Preston.”
He reached the door.
She grabbed him again.
This time her voice changed.
No crying.
No fragility.
No performance.
“Give me the bracelet.”
Preston looked down at her hand.
“Why?”
“Because it’s mine.”
“No.”
Her fingernails dug into his sleeve.
“Give it to me.”
Detective Ruiz grabbed her radio.
“Units move.”
But before officers reached the building, Khloe did something reckless.
She lunged for Preston’s jacket.
He caught her wrists.
The bracelet fell.
Pearls scattered across the hardwood floor.
Khloe dropped to her knees.
Not to collect them.
To find something.
Her fingers moved frantically.
One pearl.
Then another.
Then another.
Preston stared.
“What are you looking for?”
Khloe stopped.
Too late.
He crouched.
“Which one matters?”
She slapped his hand away.
“Get out!”
He picked up a pearl and squeezed it.
Nothing.
Another.
Nothing.
Then Khloe shoved him so hard his shoulder hit the wall.
“GET OUT!”
Police knocked.
“Denver Police!”
Khloe’s face emptied.
Preston looked toward the door.
That second was enough.
Khloe ran.
She disappeared through the kitchen.
By the time officers forced entry, the rear window was open.
A fire escape ladder rattled against the brick.
Khloe Mercer vanished into the alley wearing no shoes.
She left behind her purse.
Her phone.
And twenty-nine pearl beads.
But not the one thing Detective Ruiz hoped to find.
The missing microSD card had been with us all along.
What worried her was what Khloe had been searching for.
There had been another hidden pearl.
My father had placed two modified beads on the bracelet.
We discovered the second one after the evidence technician X-rayed the remaining pearls.
Inside it was not digital storage.
It was a key.
A tiny tubular key no longer than my thumbnail.
Detective Ruiz held it beneath the light.
“Recognize it?”
“No.”
Preston did.
Police had detained him downstairs after Khloe fled.
He sat in an interview room while Ruiz placed a photograph of the key in front of him.
His face drained.
“Where did you get that?”
“Answer the question.”
Preston stared at it.
“It opens a storage locker.”
“Where?”
He hesitated.
“Union Station.”
My heart pounded as I watched from the remote feed.
“What locker?” Ruiz asked.
“Martin asked me to rent it.”
My father.
Detective Ruiz leaned forward.
“When?”
“Two days before he died.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Preston continued.
“He told me Tara couldn’t know.”
“Why?”
“He said if anything happened to him, I was supposed to make sure she got the key.”
My nails dug into my palms.
Ruiz’s voice hardened.
“And did you?”
Preston lowered his head.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I forgot.”
I stared at him.
Forgot.
My father entrusted him with something two days before dying, and he forgot.
But Preston wasn’t finished.
“Actually,” he said quietly, “that’s not true.”
Ruiz waited.
Preston rubbed both hands over his face.
“I didn’t forget.”
“Then what happened?”
“Khloe found out about the locker.”
The room went silent.
“How?”
“She saw a text from Martin.”
“When?”
“The night before his accident.”
My pulse roared.
“And what did she say?”
Preston looked directly toward the interview-room camera.
As if he somehow knew I might be watching.
“She told me Martin was trying to destroy my career.”
Detective Ruiz asked, “And you believed her?”
Preston closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
I felt something inside me break quietly.
Not because he had slept with Khloe.
Not because he had carried her from the fire.
Because my father had reached toward him before he died.
And Preston had chosen not to reach back.
Ruiz pushed the photograph closer.
“What’s inside the locker?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then we’re going to find out.”
Union Station security opened Locker 417 shortly after midnight.
Inside sat a single black fireproof case.
My father’s handwriting covered the lid.
FOR TARA ONLY.
Detective Ruiz brought the unopened box to my room.
My hands shook as she set it in front of me.
I inserted the tiny key.
The lock clicked.
Inside were bank records.
Photographs.
A second phone.
And a sealed envelope with my name.
But beneath all of it was something I recognized immediately.
Preston’s firefighter badge.
Not the badge he carried now.
His old lieutenant’s shield from four years earlier.
Around it was a photograph.
A warehouse.
Burning.
Four bodies covered with white sheets.
May you like
And written across the back in my father’s handwriting were seven words.
PRESTON KNOWS MORE THAN HE THINKS HE DOES.
